The first release from the Open Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O) is only days away, according to one of its major supporters, Huawei.

This open source initiative, which includes operators and vendors, aims to attract others once this first release demonstrates its capabilities, which includes a dramatic reduction in the time to launch new services.

According to Joe Hou, Huawei’s VP of Global Technical Services and chair of the service architecture board: “This will be the first major result from the open source project OPEN-O and will be proof of the collaboration between operators China Mobile, China Telecom and HKT together with vendors such as Intel and GigaSpaces.”

“It can presently take six to eight weeks to introduce a new service. OPEN-O should cut this to one week by automatically configuring whatever changes are needed within the network infrastructure,” he said at Operations Transformation Forum 2016.

The Huawei exec claimed OPEN-O, which backed by the Linux Foundation, will reshape how end-to-end service deployment can be implemented over SDN and NFV. “This first release will be tested by the three operators and we’re confident that others will quickly join the project once the benefits become apparent. The most obvious will be improved efficiency and time to market.”

The need for an open orchestrator is gathering pace as operators accept that deploying such technology can cut implementation time by two-thirds.

For Huawei, which says it has contributed the most code and technical suggestions to this first release, it should trigger a call for the requirements for release 2 – scheduled to be ready by mid-2017.

Hou was also keen to dispel any notion that OPEN-O would follow other operator-led initiatives by failing to gain traction. “This is not a paper-based product. Requirements are raised and real code is generated with our next milestone being release 2.”